Deepak Chopra To Hold Healing Of Haiti Workshop

WASHINGTON – James S. Gordon, MD, international trauma expert, and founder and director of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine has just announced that Deepak Chopra, MD, aworld-renowned authority in the field of mind-body healing and best-selling author, will host a mind-body workshop entitled, "Haiti: Sharing Stories, Healing Minds: A Conversation w/ Deepak Chopra, Dr. James Gordon, and the Haitian Community,” onThursday, March 17, 2011, 6:30-8:30 p.m., in NYC .

The interactive workshop is free and open to the public. Drs. Deepak Chopra and James Gordon will discuss the establishment of a healing community in Haiti through The Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s Global Trauma Relief program. Dr. Gordon will share stories of remarkable recovery and teach the same practical self-care exercises that Haitian leaders who attended the CMBM trainings are now offering to the people of Haiti.

Dr. Gordon is laying the groundwork for a nationwide system of mental health care for the Haitian population, which has been devastated by PTSD since a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti on January 12, 2010. He is using CMBM's scientifically validated model of mind-body medicine to support and empower the Haitian community. The model includes techniques such as meditation, biofeedback, movement and drawings in a supportive small-group setting.

He recently returned from Haiti for the fifth time in as many months, and continues to implement his five-year plan to train 2000 clinicians, educators, and religious and community leaders to provide self-help skills and emotional support to hundreds of thousands of children and adults.

To-date, he has donated more than one thousand hours and $1.5 million to the effort and continues to raise funds for this ground-breaking work.

"All Haitians have been faced with a catastrophe of epic proportion, and are left feeling exposed and without answers," says Dr. Gordon. "These harsh events remind us how important it is to have the tools to survive when even that which appears to be the most secure can be gone in an instant. While much of my work is on the ground in Haiti, we know that New York has the largest population of Haitians outside of Port-Au-Prince, and want to share these life-saving, self-help skills with as many of them has possible."

"Jim is doing phenomenal, long-term mental health care in a place many will forget as the news cycle moves on," added Dr. Chopra. "If there is anything that will at this moment heal our wounded planet with its immense man-made and natural disasters, it is a deeper experiential understanding and knowledge of our own spirit. With this deeper understanding and on-going cross-cultural dialogue we have the opportunity to solve the problems of the world, address its inequities and heal ourselves."

The workshop will include a post-panel discussion, and booking signings with Drs. Chopra and Gordon, and special guests Haitian-American actor, Jamie Hector, best known for his role as Marlo Stanfield on HBO's critically-acclaimed series, The Wire; Terrie M. Williams, one of Ebony magazine's "Power 150" for Activism and author of Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We're not Hurting; andBrooklyn-based psychologist,Dr. Glorious Dunkerley, who has provide psychological services to the Caribbean-American community for the past thirteen years.

More about Dr. James Gordon

Dr. Gordon has devoted over 40 years to investigating and addressing the causes and consequences of social and individual distress, and to creating effective programs of treatment and prevention for individuals and populations suffering from psychological trauma and stress. In addition to Haiti, Dr. Gordon and CMBM have created programs of population-wide psychological healing in Kosovo, Israel, Gaza, in post-Katrina New Orleans, post-9/11 New York City, and with traumatized U.S. military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Dr. Gordon is Dean of the College of Mind-Body Medicine at Saybrook University, a Clinical Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at Georgetown Medical School, and served as the first Chair of the Program Advisory Council of the National Institute's of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine. He is the author most recently of "Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven Stage Journey Out Of Depression."